Rhod and Anna's World Adventure

Lessons learnt number 1...Never get into a conversation with a man you know smells! It's obvious that he smells from a long distance.
Ok, so it's dinner time and we're about to tuck into a quite adventurous (for us) Japanese meal in the hostel lounge. Having just woken from a power nap your body wanted to last all night, you're feeling a little delicate anyway. So we're ploughing through this concoction of random Japanesee things with our inefficient chopstick style and Derek the balloonologist gets up from the sofa he is lying flat out on and wanders over to our corner (where we are trying our best to hide from him ironically.) He kindly offers us the sweat stained sofa (hmmm, tempting!) and is about to leave when my well-meaning boyfriend (who only has the makings of a best-seller in mind) asks him the question that is to put an end to our enjoyment of our meal...."So what does a balloonologist do?"

It's a good question. It had been bugging me since i had smelt, sorry, seen him yesterday wearing his embroidered jacket. The answer is long and drawn out but to give you a general overview of the situation I will sum it up as a mish mash of Paul Gadd, a sex tourist, a low grade magician, a charity worker and a front for crazyness that probably had no part in his original life. It also seems to be an excellent excuse for not cleansing. Highlights of the conversation were that 'Thai women are all ugly ex-men' (or is that X-Men?) and 'I'm not leaving Japan until I'm married' I feel there is a long stay ahead...and I just feel sorry for the Japanese women!
He told us he had been picked up at the station and taken to lunch by a beautiful japanese woman. I've interpretted that as 'I got picked up and taken to the police station where I was questioned by a female japanese police officer and given some food'. I wonder which one of us is the closest to the truth. I still feel sick from the whole encounter. He was too close for comfort and when he began to pick his nose as I was biting into a bit of raw fish I felt my stomach lining make an upward surge towards my throat!!!

The day started early due to odd sleeping patterns. The best thing to do when you are awake early in Tokyo is to go to the fish market. So we did and by 6.30 we were virtually wading through fish guts and looking at and photographing more fish than you could ever hope to want to see. Tuna are big. I can confirm that you would get alot of tins from one fish.

Although interesting fish had limited appeal which presented the problem of being out and about very early in a city that doesn't really open up to the tourist until 10. So we wandered (via McD's for coffee) and filled our time whilst heading in the general direction of the Imperial palace gardens. (Photo above) Gardens were good but could not really capture the attention of 2 tired people who had got out of bed at 5.30am so we had to go and find some food. Rhod thinks I'm being paranoid but I swear we were being followed by the guards on patrol in the park. They just seemed to appear everywhere we went with no purpose whatsoever. I almost didn't believe Rhod when he said that one of these guards followed him into the loos but it's true!

After lunch we decided that we needed to do a circuit of the Tokyo equivalent of the circle line. It took about an hour and Anna fell asleep. I'm just trying to fit in with the culture...they all do it over here! We hopped off a Akehababra which is the electrical town. Lots of different goods from MP3 players to funky laptops, mobile phones and high tech japanese....dishwashers. In the end we had to go and sleep as we could take no more walking. Little did we know that the highlight of the day was yet to come and involved a baloonologist!